


About as Sweet as a Punch to the Face

by imagined_melody



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post Season/Series 03, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagined_melody/pseuds/imagined_melody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Ian thinks about it, Mickey has really been pretty sweet all along. He just hasn't realized it. (Written for Gallavich Week, Day 1, for the prompt "sweet.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	About as Sweet as a Punch to the Face

**Author's Note:**

> Even though I don't have a tumblr, I am aware that there's a lovely thing called Gallavich Week going on right now, and I wanted to join in! I can't guarantee a fic for each day, but I did want to at least try. Warning: this is unbetaed and barely edited and I was fighting sleep to write it before bed so it would be in time for the Day 1 closing, but I think it mostly came out the way I wanted it to. Enjoy. :)
> 
> Prompt: "I like ‘em sweet (this can be taken literally, with Ian and Mickey cooking and/or eating something sweet, or metaphorically, with a sweet and fluffy fic)."*
> 
> *Well, it's centered around the premise "sweet," at any rate. It went angsty for a large part of it. Ah well.

Ian knew he was completely and utterly screwed when he started to find Mickey Milkovich sweet.

In truth, nothing much had actually _changed_ about him. He still shrugged Ian’s arm away when he tried to sling it affectionately over Mickey’s shoulders in public; still cracked crude jokes, and flipped off cars that didn’t stop to let him cross the street (when he was walking) and pedestrians that made him stop at crosswalks (when he was driving). He made snide comments about movies Ian liked, and called Mandy names, and preferred _fucker_ to any standard terms of endearment. He shut down when Ian wanted to talk about important shit, and wouldn’t shut up when Ian just wanted a little peace and quiet. And he was unbearably cocky and difficult when he wanted to be—which, most of the time, he did.

Mickey’s personality, such as it was, had driven Ian to frustration on many occasions. In all the uproar of their daily lives and their chaotic families, his closed-off lack of affection and undemonstrative nature left Ian fuming more often than not. It took distance to make him realize the truth. Alone in his dorm at basic training, away from the South Side and his family and this maddening man, he had time to think.

At first the anger was all Ian could recognize. It kept him up at night, in his creaky little cot of a bed; his head echoed with Mickey’s voice. _Get the fuck away from me,_ it said, and _you’re nothing but a warm mouth to me. I’m done, done, done._ And he fumed with anger over it, tried to stamp out his rage with rigorous training and mental discipline. But he just grew more exhausted, and the echoes of Mickey’s voice got louder and louder.

Finally, on a cold fall night, when all Ian could think of was the family he missed and the life he’d left behind, he heard it: Mickey saying _I love you_. Only it didn’t sound like “I love you” at all. It sounded like _I missed this, it’s good to switch back,_ and _I’ll meet you there in twenty,_ and _So what’re you goin’ down for, then?_ It sounded like _Not everyone gets to blurt out how they fucking feel all the time._ It sounded like _get off of him._

It wasn’t until he finally, finally heard it in the single word _don’t_ that he finally broke down and cried. 

As he walked down the familiar Chicago streets to the Milkovich house, it did cross Ian’s mind that he might be making all of this up. He could just be hearing what he wanted to hear. It would be easy enough to pretend, at boot camp hundreds of miles away, without the real thing to deal with. 

But then he was in Mickey’s yard and Mickey was standing right there in front of him, eyes wide and wet around the edges in a way he didn’t let anyone else see, and the first thing he said was, “Fuck, Gallagher, what’d you have to go and do that for?” And Ian thought it was the sweetest thing he had ever heard. 

(He is so very, very screwed.)


End file.
